The curious case of Brett Lee

 
Brett McKay Columnist

By , 22 Feb 2010 Brett McKay is a Roar Expert

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Brett Lee

Australia's Brett Lee celebrates taking the wicket of India's Sachin Tendulkar. AP Photo/Rick Rycroft

Brett Lee has been back in the news in the last week, and depending on which paper or website you were looking at, he’s either crucial to Australia’s future campaigns or he may never play again.

In many ways, he’s the forgotten piece of the ever-growing puzzle that is the Australian fast-bowling attack.

There are a few pieces that maybe aren’t too far away, such as Nathan Bracken and Ben Hilfenhaus, and there’s even a piece with a big question mark on it, earmarked for a second genuine spinner.

But the Brett Lee piece is, at the moment, the great unknown. We don’t know where the piece is, and more importantly, we don’t know where it fits.

Lee hasn’t played a Test Match since Boxing Day 2008, against South Africa. He hasn’t played a One-Day International since last October in India.

In fact, his most recent outings in an Australian shirt have been at promotional city barbeques for the now-complete one-day series, and to give Prince William some bowling tips during a visit to a recovering bushfire-affected Kinglake in Victoria.

Just when, or even if, we’ll see him actually playing cricket again is anyone’s guess.

And I include Lee himself in that too. Just last week Lee told reporters “As far as my cricket goes, anything is possible. I may play one-dayers, or no cricket at all.

“I may never bowl another ball and if that’s the case, I’m so satisfied with my career and my longevity. I’m not saying it’s definitely over, but I’m not sure what I want to be just yet.

“To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure what I still want to do in my cricketing life. I need to get to the stage where, if I want to, I can do what I need to do on the field.

“If it’s the case that I don’t play again, well, that’s the case. There is a part of me that would like to play some sort of cricket again.”

Lee’s words sound deliberately ambiguous to me; not exactly brimming with confidence, but certainly not ruling out any return just yet.

Team-mates and coaching staff are unsurprisingly holding high hopes.

Stuart Clark, himself hoping for a return from injury for New South Wales before the end of this season, came out in support of Lee, and declared his pace and reverse-swing ability as a “must” for the 2011 World Cup, to be held on the subcontinent.

Australian selection overseer, Andrew Hilditch, wasn’t quite looking that far ahead, but was similarly confident this week about Lee’s return, declaring “I think if Brett gets back to full fitness he’ll be very much in the running for both the Twenty20 and one-day sides,” referring to the upcoming limited over series’ against Pakistan and England, both to be played in the Old Dart.

But Lee returning to cricket is quickly becoming the $64 question. Just when will this return be?

And if he can’t show some progress in the next few months, is that it for him?

About a month ago, Lee told CricInfo that he was hopeful of bowling again in around a month’s time, with the third instalment of the IPL seemingly the obvious focus, but I’m working on the fairly safe assumption that this still hasn’t happened yet.

I say it’s a “safe assumption” because if it had happened, we would’ve heard all about it.

But even if we ignore Lee’s injury comeback for the moment and assume he’s fully fit, would he be a certainty to return to any Australian side?

This might seem absurd to even to ask the question; Lee, after all, has 300-plus wickets to his name in both Test and ODI modes.

But exactly where would Lee fit into the current picture?

Mitchell Johnson, now relieved of the new ball, seems comfortable in his skin again, and Dougie Bollinger has very quickly become both a focus of the attack and a crowd favourite.

In Ryan Harris’ 140km/h outswinging yorkers, the Australian attack has suddenly found something very special, and Hilfenhaus and Peter Siddle would almost certainly come straight back into calculations once fit again.

So where does this leave Lee?

Well, my sneaking suspicion is that Lee will soon enough join the growing list of cricketers embarking on what I dubbed sometime ago the “modern retirement”.

Following the likes of Andrew Flintoff, Jacob Oram, Shaun Tait, and Victorian left-armer Dirk Nannes just last week, I expect Lee will soon retire from Test and maybe even First Class cricket, and instead just concentrate on the shorter forms.

He may even decide to follow the lead of Andrew Symonds, and just play Twenty20 cricket where-ever, and for whoever he can land a game and score a pay day.

It would seem a sad, even unfair finale for a bowler who really brought the benefits of express pace back into vogue in this country.

But as Lee himself would know, the reality of professional sport is that injury knows nothing about the concept of fairness.

For a player whose international cricket arrival was delayed by injuries in his late teens and early twenties, it would seem that his career is about to close in that same cruel way.

Follow Brett McKay on Twitter: @BMcSport
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